Let me start by saying that there are Black Eyed Peas songs that I like. But not lately. Lately, they seem to have become a vortex of American pop culture on auto-flush, sampling things and remixing things that have only been out of the public senses for a few years. Not long enough. When you remix Dick Dale, and we all know it's only because Tarantino stuck his music in some movies, you bend the culture in an uncomfortable way.

I realize that the Peas in their current incarnation are a business calculation - a product designed to be mainstreamed and marketed to the widest mass of music-buying lifeforms, and that stealing hooks from other works and rapping - sort of - over them, is a tried and true formula, and people lap that shit up and shell out dough. That realization does not help me in dealing with the Peas, especially when they show up and yell their shit wearing Tron suits in the middle of the big game. I was sincerely wishing for an electrically based wardrobe malfunction that would suddenly kill them all, and take the absence of such as further proof of the non-existence of God. Slash was probably secretly thanking himself for the pre-game bump of heroin and counting dollar signs while the Neon High School Band formed arrows and hearts and shit on the field like a Robert Klein comedy nightmare.

Who is the worst of the Black Eyed Peas? Well, I used to like will.i.am, he's lefty, and has flow, except for, it seems, last night. He's a fashion guy, and was arguably the best thing about Wolverine: Origins. Fergie's a hottie, and can sing, but it's easy to forget both of those things when she screeches like a harpy from the 50 yard line. The fact that she was a Girl Scout and a champion speller go a long way towards redeeming her in my book. Then there's Applehead App-For-That, and if it weren't for singing shit in Tagalog, triumphing over being blind, and kicking the ass of a pretty hard life, I'd be inclined to hold his dumbass name against him. That leaves Taboo, the dancing rap ninja. He gets my vote.

Word to your moms and open a window for the raptastic auditory stylings of the Ayk-Rock and the Hankster! Let me just say, right off the bat, that I loved this movie. I can go back and watch it now and still enjoy it through the involuntary shudders. I knew this song existed, but I have never seen the video, which seems pointedly odd in retrospect, since it seems clear that the song exists solely because of the video.

Ah, the video. Where to begin? Tom Hanks' shrill delivery or his apparent need to cage dance? That weird "read 'em their rights" segue? The silly PAGAN acronym that made it, along with the awesome goat-boy costumes, into the video? The non-choreographed choreography? The strippers and exploding rock set? The Solid Gold Badge dancers? All of this pales next to two gifted comedians dancing around in short pants dressed as bike cops while a frozen metal riff blares in the background.

And then, like a tramp stamp, identifying this child of 1980's TV, music, and movies, there's Robert fucking Palmer. Just wow.

According to this highly dubious source, the Discovery Channel is planning to air a dramatic re-enactment of Michael Jackson's autopsy. This has spawned an outcry from people in the Jackson estate who are accusing the Discovery Channel of being exploitive and in poor taste, among other things, while also claiming that the Discovery Channel is attempting to "dupe the public into believing that this show will have serious medical value."

Where to begin? I'll tell you, right off the bat, that I'm not interested in what you think, because a fair number of you I know are Jackson fans, and let your love of his music - even the later, crappy stuff - dominate your feelings about him. I do think that anyone who allows themselves to believe that anything they see on the Discovery Channel has serious medical value should be caught and sterilized immediately. Also, anyone who believes - as has been alleged that some will by the Jackson estate - that this is an actual photo of anything authentic is an idiot and deserves the pablum pumped down their brainstems by cable TV. If you're a sucker who believes what you see on TV, then fuck you.

I'm not a big fan of much of what the Xmas season entails. No new information here; the season lasts too long, I have unpleasant childhood crap splattered all over it, it is too commercial and religious for my tastes, and I have this lurking baseline issue with the fact that people wait for one special time of year to be decent to one another.

With the addition of my wife and kids to my life, however, the season is on a comeback. I have made it my mission to redeem what parts of it I can on an annual basis, and try my damnedest to ignore the rest. To that end, I have to push on the sides of my box here and there to see if I can't widen it a little bit. Hence, caroling. For two years in a row already. From a guy who can only kind of sing, and who doesn't really like most carols, and who would really rather not deal with the widest cross-section of people. I used to do doors for politicians, too. It's only a little different.

There's still a financial element - this IS still America. The group I've been caroling with is an unofficial subsection of Nashville in Harmony - my wife's group - and raises Christmas cash for the Fannie Battle Day Home in Nashville. But the donation part is up front and strictly voluntary; if we show up on your lawn singing and you choose not to pay anything, we'll stand there in the cold and sing our collective ass off anyway. It's a good group, lighthearted and funny, and there's usually a camera or two and dog with us, which helps my sense of fun. I don't really know why that is.

Sunday night, then. We're out caroling, and we stop at this house where two boys, one 12 or so, the other maybe 8 (?) answer the door and listen to a couple of songs. Then, as we're wrapping it up, the older boy leaves and returns with an even yet still older boy - maybe 17 or 18. He asks us if we won't come back and sing to his grandmother, who is ill. We re-position ourselves around the now open bedroom window and sing "Silent Night." The interior lights come on, and without belaying the point, the grandmother is very sick. But she's also touched. And enjoying her favorite carol, on request, being sung outside on the lawn by random group of strangers.

It's not often that I'm standing in a group being aware that I'm making a difference in someone's life, right this very minute. Usually, the difference I feel I'm making is a small part of a long-term process. The immediacy of the moment was exactly what was happening for me, though. A spine-tingling awareness that by going out and doing something I was initially ambivalent about, I improved someone's evening, and possibly their holiday season, and maybe their life, in a small but significant way.

Stones River Mall in Murfreesboro has a cool play place in the middle of it for pre-K people, and I have one of those, and I wanted to read a little, have some lunch, and write a postcard to my grandmother. And if you're the sort of person who gives shit to guy - who writes his grandmother once a week - just because he went to a fucking mall, then I invite you to put some comments in the comments field that will push down some of the crazy shit that's over there now! Yeah!

A shopping mall should be the most generic experience ever - it is, essentially, a closed in outdoor space. However, much in the way that some sports arenas are more symmetrical than others, (as it says in the Book of Matthew, 10:48) malls seem to generate their own personalities, and in the case of most, this is not a good thing. Stones River is no exception. It's not a dying mall, which would make it a member of classic genre and give it some retro credibility, no - it's a desperate mall, filled with the clammy sweat of commerce junkies and airborne spores of quiet wishing for crowds that float from the bodies of the clerks in the reconditioned air. The shoppers are too sparse to congregate and form any kind of real crowd, and so everyone is individually on display, from the angry vet ordering fries to the guy reading a folded paperback on his lunch break from Unflattering Shirt Retail Emporium.

The other parents are worth noting, with the typical child abusers on display, practicing phone negligence from the steering wheel to the playground when not actively yanking tiny arms from sockets and yelling at their offspring for falling down or pretending stuff on the way to the car. Like YOU wouldn't pretend to be somewhere else if you had you for a mom. One woman has gone on and on about her Up With Jesus Experience while three other skinny, bored moms struggle to concentrate - the children she's ignoring now will get her attention with drugs and fucking years from now, and only Jesus will answer her calls. That's the fantasy, of course.

Weird, floppy mutant strains of giant ferns and spinach lurk in mammoth fake terracotta urns and flank the entrances, soda machines, and greasy teenagers, who seem largely unchanged, with the exception of music delivery devices, since 1993. The desperation infuses everything, from the stressed voice of the non-Greek, prison tattooed food guy hawking chicken, "Hey buddy, how are you? Try chicken?" (nobody does) to the pathetic half-racks of ceiling hung Christmas lights that even look wrong to a four year old. "White Christmas" is crooned into a slur by some half-wit studio hack, and played as the soundtrack to Cartoon Network's League of Super Evil on the flatscreen, which somehow makes both more entertaining.

But my daughter was happy. And she made a friend, and we solved a ladybug puzzle together. So it was ultimately worth it to brave the mall. For now.

I hate Christmas, blah fucking blah, we go over this every year. No new information. Except for this: I have recently had a conversation with my son in which I confessed that I probably wouldn't tolerate this holiday if it weren't for my kids, and that I do get genuine love and enjoyment out of watching them do Christmas stuff, and that their very presence on Earth is slowly redeeming the yuletide. He found this to be positive and heartwarming. Mostly, though, I hate the stuff, and here's some things I do to avoid instanity (instantity=instant + insanity).

If you have grown weary of a Christmas song - and you have - sing it at the top of your lungs and with some children. Go all lounge singer on it, like Bill Murray in early SNL. Rub some funk on it. Silly it up, make new & better, less socially acceptable lyrics. Laughing will ensue, and if it doesn't, you're doing it wrong. Scream it aggressively. Your sanity may depend on you embracing and reclaiming the song and making it fun again - picture an angry, spitting Christmas elf with a sharpened candy cane shiv. He's coming at you, and the only way to protect yourself is run forward and hug his arms to his sides, pinning him. It's like that.

Don't be afraid to be a complete prick. This holiday shit's been out now since before Halloween, and it's unreasonable to expect people to be nice to each other for a full quarter of the year, so fuck it. Shove someone out of your way and bonk 'em on the head with a roll of wrapping paper on your way by. You've got places to be for Baby Christ's sake. If they complain, scream "FAH-LA-LA-LA-LA, FAH-LA-LA-LA!!!" at them. It works. Make sure to wear goofy antlers or a stupid red hat while doing this.

Bell ringers: "Sorry, I'm allergic to bells." In this society, people don't know whether you're serious or not. People are allergic to everything now from wheat to peanuts to canola to gluten to air, and they'll swear they saw a Learning Channel documentary about bellinitis. "I can't count when there are bells ringing" isn't bad either. Running past while incoherently screaming is always an option, and works on Girl Scouts and cheerleaders in the Spring, too. Bottom line - I don't give money to churches, or bell-ringing door blockers who make too much noise at me. Merry fucking Christmas. At least the Girl Scouts have a product I actually want. And some dignity.

Those signs exhorting you to "Keep Christ in Christmas" have got to fucking go, so steal them. I've got two of those bastards in my trunk right now. If you're uncomfortable with theft, simply vandalize them. Step up and stomp it flat, or if you can get a good angle, kick it like an assailant's ball sac. Then stand there on the lawn, glare at the house and dare that divinity-sweet conservative old couple to come out and say something. Or, or, carry some stickers for covering "Christmas." "Church" is a nice substitute. If you prefer the surreal, be prepared to cover "Christ" with "Superman," "Papa Smurf," "Lesbians," "Booze," or "Allah." Shit, those aren't bad suggestions for regular daily life, either. If you're uncomfortable with vandalism, I don't really know why you're reading this.

A very wise man, Sid Millson, once told me that he always shakes hands with Santa, because "you never know when it might be the real one." This was over breakfast one morning when I was already old enough to drive and hold down a job, and yet - it sticks with me. So I do this, whenever it's practical. I'm not busting to the front of the photo line at the mall to pump the jolly old elf's hand and mutter "I love your work," but I do approach and shake the hand of any Santa I see out walking, and I encourage my children to do likewise. Keeps things interesting. Of course, I also do this for Elvis impersonators and anyone in a mascot costume the whole rest of the year.

Carry a can of flocking. Flock away. Spray "FLOCK YOU" on a nativity scene. Flock a bell-ringer. Or a cop, if you're really out there one night. Flock stuff totally at random. Spray "Flock the Man" on a big-ass window somewhere. Flock "Just Married" on people's vehicles.

"I need a nearly newborn baby to play the role of baby Jesus for a Christmas video. The baby will be held, cuddled, etc. by an actress portraying Mary. There is no compensation but you will get a copy of the video. The video will be posted to YouTube and other popular sites to promote a beautiful Chirstmas song by a Nashville songwriter."

From my return email:

"I am a 36-year old man living in Murfreesboro, and would love to play the part of the newborn Baby Jesus in your Christmas music video. I have natural on-screen charisma, and really think I could get to the heart of the motivation for the newborn savior. I look good in swaddling clothes, and am not allergic to hay. I love animals and virgins. I also like to be held and cuddled and et cetera. Especially et cetera. That would be all the compensation I need, and I feel like I could really bring a lot to this role and your ensuing campaign of YouTube videos and whatnot. I will shave off my beard if need be. I do not think discriminating against me based on age is legal. Thank you.

I buy things at the Dollar General store across the street from my apartments sometimes. Dollar Generals are always these interesting cultural whirlpools of vague sadness, the lonely elderly and the aimless broke citizenry joined with people who just want something cheap. Knockoff products next to movies that were once popular, slave-made clothing and holiday decorations, generic medicine. There’s usually an aisle or two that resemble a crackhead’s garage sale; stuff spilling out onto the ground, things half ripped out of packages, and claustrophobic, non-ADA spaces and corners they must get cited for once a week. I’m used to all of this, having had dollar stores of one kind or another located near everything in my life, pretty much, and the only thing that keeps assaulting me about this one is the bad fucking country music that’s on every time I go in there.

Country music, based on my non-scientifically gathered representative sample, has more aggressively taken the same slide into puerile, obvious, homogenized meaninglessness over the past decade and a half or so that pop and everything else took, but it had to do it with a conservative Christian primary listening audience in mind. Contemporary Dollar Store Country seems to be populated by the most blinkered homilies, things everyone knows, but stated in such a way as to pluck at one’s heartstrings like any episode of Little House on the Prairie where someone died. Strong relationships come from listening to one another, don’t swear in front of your kids because they copy stuff that you do, be nice to people. Cry a little, so you can remember these things. (sniff)

If they don’t have that vomit-inducing claptrap, they have such overused clichés about redneckedness you’d swear they were parodies, and they are – albeit unintentional. Probably. Maybe. If not, Satan works in their idea house. She thinks my tractor’s sexy? I want to check you for ticks? These are the songs, trapped in my head, making me forget – shit, anything. I’d rather have Al Capone’s hat size (6 7/8) in my head than that ridiculous cowpie of a song.

I gotta cowboy hat and a homily; I wear my boots and I drive a Chevy

I'm just like you

and we agree on everything, too.

I won't challenge you with profanity, or any ideas, thoughts or complexity,

I vote for the GOP, and the Dems'll never speak for me.

I got a straight white Jesus to whom I pray,

he's the only one in my heart's praying room,

and I'm deeply sorry now,

for having said, "whom."

I, for one, would like to see a radical left atheist country anthem – something a little more subversive that doesn’t once mention McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, John Deere, or fucking trucks of any brand be they endorsed by Denis Leary or not.

I can be a simple man, without being a simple man,

I prefer to think things through because I simply can.

Don't need no imam or pastor, no rabbi helping me,

Just some quiet time to think, sit alone and simply be.

I try to let my conscience be my guide, that small internal voice,

It can be really hard to hear above the shouting and the noise.

Don't need no news, or NPR, no Fox to tell me how I feel,

I've been around long enough for convictions made of steel.

Of course, there’s no audience for that, unless you tart it up and parade it around in almost no clothes and a cowboy hat in a mock-Western setup somewhere. Even the best of the country crooners, if they be female, are prone to the trap of the cheesecake music video, and sex sells even better to the repressed, I imagine.

I have go charge my iPod now, so it’s ready the next time I run short on hand soap or dish detergent. They don’t make enough soap for me to clean that sound out of my ears.